Yu Yingtao, President and CEO of New H3C Group: The era of artificial intelligence requires imagination, but also intensive pragmatism

Shen Jianyuan/Text

Faced with the vigorous development of AIGC technology represented by ChatGPT, governments at all levels, various industries, and every enterprise are facing new opportunities and challenges. There is no doubt that AI has brought another round of opportunities for productivity growth. How to adapt to my country's wide range of application scenarios, consolidate technological foundations, make up for industry shortcomings, activate data elements, and explore intelligent applications will become the next step in the development of China's digital economy. Important issues in the golden decade?

On June 9, H3C Group, a subsidiary of Tsinghua Unigroup, held the 2023 NAVIGATE Summit. Yu Yingtao, Chairman of Tsinghua Unigroup and President and CEO of H3C Group, said in a keynote speech entitled "Intensive and Pragmatic Farming Brings Wisdom to the Times", "Digital technology has ushered in a new moment of evolution. In the era of AIGC, with the With the widespread application of large-scale computing power clusters, the infrastructure capabilities of large models will be a manifestation of the overall collaborative power that integrates data computing, network links, and computing power scheduling."

According to a Gartner report, the global IT services market will reach US$1.36 trillion in 2023, a year-on-year growth of 9.1%. In the AI ​​era, how do companies respond to business competition and technological challenges in complex environments? How has H3C achieved its development goal of becoming a company with a market value of 100 billion by 2025? What is the performance of each business segment in the first half of the year?

Regarding the above issues, Yu Yingtao admitted in an interview that the epidemic has brought about various uncertainties such as impact and slowdown in economic growth. “But thanks to the in-depth implementation of a series of measures, in recent years The company's performance has maintained a rapid growth trend in the past: net profit increased from 2.2 billion yuan in 2016 to 3.73 billion yuan in 2022; operating income increased from 21.09 billion yuan in 2016 to 49.81 billion yuan in 2022, with a compound annual growth rate of 1.55% %, which is nearly twice the growth rate of China’s ICT market during the same period. Despite the unfavorable situation, H3C still maintains its goal of achieving a market value of 100 billion in 2025 and hopes to recover and grow rapidly in the second half of the year.”

Internal data from New H3C shows that in 2022, New H3C’s strategic key customer business revenue will increase by 33.8%, and the share of each product, including enterprise-level WLAN, SDN software, blade servers, etc., will be at the forefront of the market. The operator's business has grown by 38%. Major breakthroughs have been made in the operator's three major scenarios: backbone network, metropolitan area network, and 5G bearer network. In particular, the iconic high-end routers and core routers have received large-scale deployment. The application has obviously increased the stickiness of our cooperation with operators. In addition, the Internet business grew by 10%. Government cloud revenue increased by 60%.

2023 is the first year that AI will enter commercial use. Previously, at the 2020 Navigator Summit, H3C released the AI ​​in All strategy and announced that artificial intelligence would be embedded in all product lines. In order to adapt to the disruptive innovation in the artificial intelligence era, what capabilities does the new H3C need to possess?

As an IT service solution provider in the digital field, H3C has many years of experience in providing professional services to government and enterprise customers. At the same time, as one of the few domestic ICT companies that can provide end-to-end complete solutions, H3C understands the industry's demand for computing terminal products and services. "New H3C hopes to use its experience and technology accumulation in the fields of digital technology and artificial intelligence to promote the development speed of AIGC-related applications." By intensively studying the native cloud intelligence technology, deeply exploring customer application scenarios, creating leading digital solutions with pragmatic concepts, and accelerating the intelligent upgrade of digital transformation through the ever-evolving digital brain. ”

During this Navigator Summit, H3C released a number of new products for AI. It includes AI servers designed for large model training; the world’s first 51.2T, 800G CPO silicon photonics data center switch, and the Aofei computing power platform that supports large computing power scheduling. AI server large model training time can be increased by 70%, supports full liquid cooling, and will be available in batches in July; 800G CPO silicon photonics data center switches, which originally required 800 switches to train a large model, now only require 100; Ao The Feixin platform can support computing power scheduling of 8,000 nodes, and the concurrent training time is shortened by 50%.

Li Li, Senior Vice President of New H3C Group and President of Industry BG, said, “In the past, New H3C focused on scenarios and created many integrated solutions, gaining an in-depth understanding of the real operations of more industries. The explosion of AI applications has caused more industries to face critical challenges. Opportunities for plastic molding. Leading companies in various industries are increasing their investment, which is a very good opportunity for New H3C."

The digital industry is huge in scale, and the sinking market contains huge business opportunities. However, customers in lower-tier markets have weak digital capabilities, and it is difficult to match capabilities, systems, and funds. In the view of Wang Xin, vice president of New H3C Group and president of Commercial BG, "The real problem in expanding the prefecture-level market is the sinking of capabilities, which requires platform construction and talent allocation." The former determines depth and breadth, while the latter determines sustainability. properties, all require precipitation technology and application. Wang Xin said, "New H3C will form a business consortium with its partners to deliver AI capabilities to customers in the commercial market, allowing enterprises to truly enjoy the dividends of digital transformation."

With the arrival of the new era of artificial intelligence represented by ChatGPT, enterprises also need goals that match future development.

Yu Yingtao believes that in the era of artificial intelligence, technology is not the problem. What is more important is to find a business model that can adapt to the current society. It takes the imagination of entrepreneurs to empower all industries and usher in new disruption and innovation. He expressed the view that the new H3C will not participate in the competition of general large models, but will focus on vertical industries and regions.

To this end, the private domain model released by H3C - Baiye LinSeer, is mainly an industry-focused, AI-compatible private domain model that focuses on industry vertical applications. Through cooperation with partners and local governments, it can be customized according to customers' needs. Tailor-made AI capabilities according to needs, providing secure, customized and exclusive private services. At the same time, H3C has launched the "AIGC Open Strategy", which not only supports the model of "New H3C ICT Infrastructure with Baiye Lingxi" to ensure data security and achieve optimal cooperation; it also supports the "customer-selected large-model H3C ICT infrastructure" model. Patterns meet a variety of needs.

"The establishment of large-scale private domain models, the construction of infrastructure, and the resolution of security issues require a training process, and ultimately achieve profitability based on scale." Yu Yingtao said, "Currently, H3C plans to expand the private domain to large-scale The model is based on past applications, such as embedded generative large models in the first batch of smart cities such as Hangzhou, Zhengzhou, Lianyungang, Hohhot, etc. It is optimistically expected to be officially commercialized by the end of this year or the first half of next year."

2023 marks the 7th anniversary of the establishment of the new H3C Group and the 20th anniversary of the birth of the H3C brand. Currently, the new H3C is in a new stage of development.

Ziguang Co., Ltd. announced in January this year that HPE entities will sell its 49% stake in New H3C to Ziguang International. After the transaction is completed, Ziguang International holds 100% of the equity of New H3C. New H3C has restored its domestic identity, so it will have more development opportunities and may achieve external expansion through capital means.

Yu Yingtao said that New H3C plans to accelerate its overseas expansion. In three to five years, overseas business will become the "second growth curve" of New H3C and it will become a truly international company. Currently, H3C mainly sells network equipment in overseas markets, including some PC and server products. Its revenue has maintained steady growth every year and has covered 17 countries.

Faced with various uncertainties in the future, in the field of solutions, H3C needs to empower hundreds of industries through AI to cope with changes in aspects such as interaction, organization, data, computing power, connection, and perception. Yu Yingtao said he would remain positive and optimistic. In his view, H3C's capabilities and confidence are "accumulated by hundreds of millions of lines of code." These capabilities can help small and medium-sized enterprises achieve digital transformation relying on the continuous upgrading of ICT infrastructure. He hopes that New H3C will take practical actions, adhere to the brand concept of "Striving for Excellence, Bringing Wisdom to the Era", not talk empty words, and be truly down-to-earth. We must use technology, concepts and solutions to provide more value to customers, and work with enterprises and all sectors of society to welcome the true arrival of the artificial intelligence era.

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